Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins (and eggplant)

Ha, I still haven't managed to completely neglect my journal, and this is the second month of trying to keep up with it! Okay, so my first November entry is about two weeks late...but hey, I've been trying to catch up from spending a weekend in the woods, and I've been distracted by lots of cooking lovelies.

So here is a photo story of Halloween weekend:

Pumpkin carving!

Pumpkin GUTS!

Thanks, Alexis.

The love of a mother.

Mmm baked acorn squash with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and a baked eggplant concoction with tomatoes, onion, thyme, and green pepper.

Okayu and Chilly October Mornings

So I've been glued to my desk as much as possible over the past few days, since I returned from playing Irish music in the woods with Martin Hayes, and let me tell you-- as much as possible just hasn't been enough.

So in an attempt to glean a little more time at my lovely corner desk in the livingroom, I've been getting up between 6 and 7 every morning to make coffee, stare into space, check my email, and write. This morning I woke up with a 40 lb dog on my legs, freezing under my one quilt. Apparently my dog got cold in the night as well, because I couldn't get him off the bed, and he stole what few blankets I did have.

And since it is so chilly this morning (finally) I decided that what I needed was a good old fashioned bowl of...okayu.

And, it just so happens, that I have some leftover brown rice in the cooker from yesterday, a jar of shiso umeboshi, an egg, green onions, and miso paste laying around! Everything I could need for a perfect bowl of hot okayu!

This is my favourite cold weather, under the weather, feeling lonely chilly down quietly happy missing Japanhome craving something deliciously warm and salty dish.

Illustrations and words are morning treats!

This morning I woke up fully intending to write on the novel...and after I wrote a line of dialogue, I promptly got distracted by skimming through some of my favourite people's blogs.

I was feeling like some illustration inspiration, which I found in abundance at the blog of Miss Via Fang, who is an illustration master at the Edinburgh College of Art. In fact, I think it's about time that I pester her to do some illustrations for my novel. Yes, Jocelyn in full Victorian formal dress...in the form of a deer. Perfect.

Then I doodled on over to Emma Bartholomew's blog, The Bedside Poet, for some warm morning words to go with my coffee in this chilly autumn morning.

And because all inspiration (and distraction) should also be three dimensional, I am also spending some time sifting through the new collections of designer Jenny Sweetnam and making an imaginary wish list. I was able to wear one of her pieces, fondly called a "Flexi Hexi", which looks similar to her Dogtooth Cape design, yesterday for the first time since last winter. This, of course, reminded me of how many other of her pieces are on my wishlist. Then, meandering through her site this morning, I found lots of new items to add to that list.

And now the novel calls again, so I will leave these blogs for others to peruse.

Pumpkin Pie, Cardamom, and Molasses, Oh My!

(I meant to post an unmolested photo of this pie first, but it was attacked while my camera battery was charging.)

So the first true baking of the autumn has commenced. I meant to start this a few weeks ago, but I got distracted by a recipe for corn and bean and pumpkin stew, so I made that instead and never got around to turning on the oven.

So last night I *completed* my first attempt at homemade pumpkin pie, and a very successful attempt it was, too! I say completed, because I began making it on Saturday night, and completely lost motivation, which turned out to be a huge blessing, because for once I actually chilled my pie crust overnight, and boy what a difference that makes!

The pie crust was a shortening crust from scratch, because my roommate ate my butter and I didn't feel like going to the store at that point- so, that dusty jar of crisco in the back of the cabinet it was!

I froze the crisco overnight, and then made up the crust the next morning and chilled it all day. Best pie crust I've ever made, despite my definite preference for butter crusts!

The pie crust was just a simple 2-1-1/2 recipe, with flour, shortening, and cold water. It came out delicious and flaky and okay, a little bit burned around the edges because my oven is not very precise. So once I cut off the very edges of the crust, it was delicious.

The pie recipe was a modification of this recipe: Suzanne's Old Fashioned Pumpkin Pie

The modifications were these:

I replaced the evaporated milk with a tin of condensed milk.

Instead of white sugar, I swirled in some molasses at the end.

I definitely used more than a 1/4 tsp of each of those spices.

The result was sweet and full of lovely spices, and because I didn't run my pumpkin through a food processor, had nice bits of pumpkin in it. I like the pie a little chunkier, which is a major pitfall to using tinned pumpkin.


Also, what better than a little poetry with your pie?

As I was sitting on my kitchen floor, engaged in a conversation with my friend and waiting for the pie to bake, my roommate came into the kitchen to share a poem from the stunning poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly with us. And now I can't get the poem out of my consciousness.

Blessed is the Field

In the late heat the snakeroot and goldenrod run high,
White and gold, the steaming flowers, green and gold,
The acid-bitten leaves....It is good to say first

An invocation. Though the words do not always
Seem to work. Still, one must try. Bow your head.
Cross your arms. Say: Blessed is the day. And the one

Who destroys the day. Blessed is this ring of fire
In which we live....How bitter the burning leaves.
How bitter and sweet. How bitter and sweet the sound

Of the single gold and black insect repeating
Its two lonely notes. The insect's song both magnifies
The field and casts a shadow over it, the way

A doorbell ringing through an abandoned house
Makes the falling rooms, papered with lilies and roses
And two-headed goats, seem larger and more ghostly.

The high grasses spill their seed. It is hard to know
The right way in or out. But here, you can have
Which flower you like, though there are not many left,

Lady's thumb in the gravel by the wood's fringe
And on the shale spit beneath the black walnut that houses
The crow, the peculiar cat's-paw, sweet everlasting,

Unbearably soft. Do not mind the crow's bark.
He is fierce and solitary, but he will let us pass,
Patron of the lost and broken-spirited. Behind him

In the quarter ring of sumacs, flagged like circus tents,
The deer I follow, and that even now are watching us,
Sleep at night their restless sleep. I find their droppings

In the morning. And here at my feet is the self-heal,
Humblest of flowers, bloomless but still intact. I ate
Some whole once and did not get well but it may strike

Your fancy. The smell of burning rubber is from
A rabbit carcass the dog dragged into the ravine.
And the smell of lemon is the snakeroot I am crushing

Between my thumb and forefinger....There could be
Beneath this field an underground river full
Of sweet liquid. A dowser might find it with his witching

Wand and his prayers. Some prayers can move
Even the stubborn dirt....Do you hear? The bird
I have never seen is back. Each day at this time

He takes up his ominous clucking, fretting like a baby,
Lonely sweetling. It is hard to know the right way
In or out. But look, the goldenrod is the color

Of beaten skin. Say: Blessed are those who stand still
In their confusion. Blessed is the field as it burns.

6 Months Later...

I'm still alive! It seems I have a major problem with cyclicalness. Is that how you make cyclical into an adjective? It seems like there should be a more graceful way. Maybe I just have a cyclical nature.

So let's give it another go, especially now that I'm a bit more settled.

Just to bring everything up to date, I have settled into a life in East Austin, where I live in a lovely little writer bungalow and spend a lot of my weekends gardening and landscaping.

I'm working part time as a teacher (it feels like full time, but my paycheck reminds me that it's definitely part time!) at the Bronze Doors Academy, where I teach creative writing, poetry, academic writing, Socratic Dialogue, textile arts, and Japanese to an assortment of odd, bright, dynamic middle and high-schoolers.

Here is my goofy little teacher profile.

I just submitted a round of poems to the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg competition, in hopes that this year I may get lucky again. Otherwise, I have work upcoming in Alimentum and Confrontation that I am VERY excited about. Order a copy of the next issues when they're out, and I'll be there!

I'm also playing full time with the most amazing inspiring people in a surreal musical project called The Human Circuit. (Excuse the half-finished webpage. We've been concentrating more on practising music. And yes, we do realise that the band name has somewhat appropriate initials.)

The crappy myspace page has some nice live recordings.

We've played a few shows, and besides some technical snags mainly stemming from the incredible difficulty of micing a cello, things are going swimmingly. The next show will probably be a Halloween show, with even more bells and whistles and funky costumes than usual.

So this band is a beautiful thing in my life, and soon we hope to be in the studio working on the first full length album.

I have also postponed my project in India to next summer, so that I have some more desperately needed time to work and right and think and get my head wrapped around the events of this past year.

And it is autumn, so it is time for baking pies, cooking savoury things, writing letters to loved ones overseas, working furiously on my novel, poems, and Emma's and my chapbook. It's time for planting bulbs that will come up in the spring and establishing a fall/winter garden and learning more about growing things. This gardening thing is a constant learning experience, and I am learning that it takes so much more than sticking some plants or seeds in the ground and watering them every day. I'm learning about organic pest control, fertilizer, making leaf mulch, noting what areas get what amount of sun and planting accordingly, how to flick the stems of tomato plants to that they pollinate themselves, the importance of bees, and how much I love spending my mornings murming and singing to my plants and giving them love and attention.

Here are some pictures of the yard before I got motivated:





































And then here's what happens when I go to the nursery and get inspired. Jessamine, Phillipenes Violet, White Salvia, Rock Rose, and some grass that gets red trumpet flowers, along with my two types of basil and some cactus in the pots. I have also strategically planted Anenome bulbs around our metal sculpture and around the tree in by the street.











Purple mums, Zinnia, Nasturtium, Jasmine, Marigolds, a Fire Bush, Fennel, Rue, and some edible purple cabbages (these are where the organic pest control learning is happening.)












Two types of Salvia, Sweet Potato vine, a Butterfly bush/vine thingy, Marigold, and Pineapple Sage.



























Backyard wilderness! Both gardens are full of veggies and lovely green things.







Rosemary, Lavender, and strangely, some cucumber vines.




























Zucchini, Kale, Yellow Chard, Mustard Greens, and some dubious carrot sprouts. Just out of the frame is an heirloom tomato plant.

April 25th, Ted Kooser's Birthday, the anniversary of the Easter Rebellion

Well, I started to write this on the 25th, and then fell asleep, and then I procrastinated a little bit, so it is now the 27th- but I can't be bothered to look up anything about today, so I'm sticking with what I had for the 25th.

Happy slightly belated birthday to Ted Kooser, who consistently delivers punches precisely where it matters and scatters snowflakes over the aches.
Here is one of my favourite poems from Ted:

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.


Also, today is the anniversary of the Easter Rebellion! Not quite as cheery as Mr. Kooser's birthday, but significant nonetheless.

I'm currently awash with stuff to do, trying to plow through a new grant proposal, keep up with my tutoring and my writing students, write these two novels, write poem letters to Emma, sew an Elizabethan corset, and oh yeah, prepare a playlist of music for recording. Too many things!

So I'm at one of my favourite new Austin cafes, Monkey Nest, enjoying the wide open space and the light through the windows, and the bizarre playlist alternating between the Killers and Modest Mouse, with the occasional Beatles, Stones, or Cake song thrown in, for spice. Last week it was a run of Three Dog Night and 70's tunes- heaven!

One of the things I adore about this cafe (besides the fact that I get to hang out with Merri Su every time I come!) is how light and open it is, and, of course, their delicious Turkish spice tea. I'm so used to my usual haunts on the East side- Rio Rita, Cherrywood, etc- which are all lovely and funky, but also a bit dark and enclosed. Although there is the big plus that I can get alchohol in those places, to you know, help me get through my workload.

So I've written a few new pieces in the last week, and in even more exciting news, just had a poem accepted by the print journal Alimentum, which is a gorgeous publication that focuses on literature about food. Which is, of course, my favourit type of literature. The actual journal will be the Summer edition, so it won't be out for a few months, but what an inspiration! One step back, two steps forward!

Another tremendous inspiration that has surfaced in the past few days is, interestingly, my little brother. In the past few days he has chased multiple tornados across north Texas with a team of stormchasers, documenting cloud rotation, twisters, wind and lightning. He almost got hit by lightning, actually. I'm so jealous and incredibly inspired by his work! If I can get my hands on a few of his photos from this latest adventure, I'll post them in my next entry.

Willows Wept, April 16th

Well, I've searched, but the only notable thing about April 16th is that it's possibly the day that Odysseus returned from the Trojan war. Otherwise, nothing. It is a pretty mundane day.

However, I'm super excited, because I've just had a poem accepted to the Willows Wept Review, which is an online publication that I really enjoy. So, today is at least notable in the realm of my small, goofy life.

I can't actually believe that I've neglected to post anything for three days- I don't know where those three days went, but I suspect they might have been stolen by yoga. Next week is going to be shanghaied by a raw food diet, along with lots of yoga. Where in the world did this usage of "shanghai" come from, anyway? It feels a bit like saying "I was tokyoed into driving to the docks". Weird. It always seemed natural when people said it, but as I write the oddness of it is really striking.

A Chapbook, a Star Poem, Loss, and the Garden of Eden

Happy April 13th- I'm too lazy to look up why this day is significant. Actually, it's significant to me because I have finally finished a new poem! It is the 11th or 12th installment in the Letters to Emma collection, and I finally got to use all of my star terminology.

So the lovely Emma Bartholomew and I have finally started to knuckle down on two ongoing projects:
The first is a chapbook of letter poems that has been a work-in-progress since our frantic dissertation scramble last summer.
The second is a novella (I'm not keeping my fingers crossed for it to reach novel length) set in the Garden of Eden. It's almost to seventy pages at the moment, so we're aiming for some further development, but not to actually triple the length or anything.

So, on top of the full length novel that I'm having a kickboxing match with every day, these two projects are in full force launch as well. Whew, and I actually need to find another job. What a silly world!

SO, I know I missed my update/NMP entry yesterday, but that was due to the fact that I was actually doing some writing, so...

The end of the Tokugawa

April 11th, marking the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

My phrase for the day, funded in part by the ever inspiring dialogue of Radiolab, is



"empires of time".

There's a poem here, I'm sure. Is there a poem here for anyone else? Any takers?

Day 10, Bill Callahan has got poetry

Well, I have only written half of a sentence that didn't make any particular sense today, BUT, it was not a complete bust for a few reasons.

First of all, I reencountered Rilke, and find myself, again, in love with a dead writer. Thanks to Book People for letting me wander around with a book of his selected poetry without purchasing it.

Second, and this was the reason I was in Book People in the first place this afternoon, I had the pleasure of listening Bill Callahan read again from his "Letters to Emma Bowlcut". He started in the middle this time- very little introduction (except for the wonderfully awkward "I never know if I should do an introduction or not- I've never been to a reading in my life"), four or five of the letters from the book, and then he says thanks and plops himself down to sign books. The whole episode was simple, awkward, and utterly charming. I love hesitant readings, as if the reader has a rhythm and an akwardness in their words that is unique to their mind, and the listener can't quite catch and hold onto it.
Also, I get all shaky when I look Bill in the eyes. This has happened before, and is very uncomfortable.

So Bill has got some poetry, and so does Rilke, and hopefully tomorrow I'll wax a little poetical myself- happy national poetry month day ten!

Alaska Day! Yoga! A few sentences eked out! NPM Day 9!

I'd like to wish everyone a happy "Anniversery of the Purchase of Alaska" Day! The day that we decided that there was gold to be got in that great frozen gorgeous land and promptly purchased it from the Russians.

It is also "Corinne jumps full on back into yoga day", and I keep wobbling and tripping into people's way, because I feel like jelly all over! Man, all of that driving back and forth between Santa Fe and Austin and the Grand Canyon and West Texas and whowhatsit to wheredoneit, plus some other life factors, has really janked my body up all weird. So today I got up after a whopping five hours of restless sleep and went to heated power yoga...not the easiest reentry point to the practise, but boy did it feel wonderfully intense! In a few hours I'm off to a meditation and breathing workshop for a little more centreing, then it's music with two of my favourite lovely ladies out at the farm. Gonna play the cello for the donkeys. Afterwards I will stumble, delirious in the bliss of it all, to an Irish session at my friend's home. What a lovely way to end a day chock full of all the things my soul and my body love!

But in this hour pause before any of that stuff, I am attempting to put in my writing time for the day. Poems about shyness and measuring people by brightness, and a few sentences added to tht torturous conversation between Adam and Simon. This is going to take a little slogging through, this scene. But onward and upward! The family dinner with Jocelyn, Beatrice, Simon, and Adam continues! Just to toss out a little more information for the sake of context, Jocelyn=one of the protagonists, and is Adam's sister. Beatrice is Adam and Jocelyn's mother, and Simon the father. Zoom in on typical Victorian family dinner setting, brace of pheasant and all, spiced up with a not-so-typical conversation involving alchemy, the clergy, the East India Company, and some dubious magicians.

Buddha's Birthday!

Happy eighth day of national poetry month, and Buddha's birthday (in Japan)!

I was listening to an episode of Radiolab this morning about scientific discoveries. What caught me particularly about this episode (though most of them bring me close to tears), was the discussion involving globular clusters, the formation of stars, and the period table. This took me back to a month ago, when I drove from Santa Fe to the McDonald Observatory in the Davis mountains of west Texas. I was attending a star party that evening, and popped into one of the various lectures that was going on, just in time to catch a few pieces of information which almost knocked me over. It is this information which the Radiolab episode brought to mind, and which I am now stirring and stewing into a poem. First, that our atoms are born of supernovas, which are where the densest elements like iron and calcium come from. Imagine, we have starstuff in our bones.
Second, that there is no shape to the universe.
And then there was a random assortment of words and phrases so beautiful that I can't stop shaping them with my mouth, tasting them, typing them on the page to admire their form: paralex, angular shift, ressession velocity.
All galaxies are moving away from us,
and,
distances are measured by brightness.

So I haven't worked on the novel today, but their are plenty of words in my thoughts.
Hopefully a poem will climb out of them soon.

Writing, procrastinating

Well, after a year, here I am again. It's national poetry month, and the month when I was birthed, so I have an idea.
It goes something like this-

Since I'm struggling with the challenge of writing a poem every day this month, I'm going to aim for just writing something. Even if it's a meaningless blog entry. At least my brain will have gotten a little word exercise. Is this productive, or procrastinating? Let's enjoy the mystery.

It's April 7th, good old World Health Day (I ate some arugula and am now sipping on a glass of plum wine- well, I was sipping on it, but now that the wine's gone I've deteriorated into gnawing on the alcoholic plum- so, fruits and veggie), anyway, April 7th, and I've written two poems and edited one. I'm a little behind the "poem a day" goal.

If only a paragraph added to the novel counted as a poem... and you know what, from now on it does. So I'm sitting with sticky plummy fingers in the orange Texas sunset, looking out the windows of my parents' house, and stuck on the same damn sentence of the novel that I've been stuck on for days.

It seems (and this is news to me, since this is my first novel) that there are some places in the story- innocent, innocuous seeming places- which present you with a turning point for a character or sequence of events. Or both. Or one that causes the other inadvertently. Anyway, I've been at such a point for the past couple days. The question is- does Simon approve, vaguely, of his son joining the East India Company? Or does he mistrust them at this point, and disapprove? All he has to do is answer his son's question "Do you think that a worthwile use of one's time?". And yet, with the response to this question he will either become a vague, scholarly father with only enough attention to the position of the East India Co. to know that the magicians involved in it (yes, magicians- the book is sent in an alternate 1840's England, full of fun things like alchemists) are quite skilled and knowledgeable, or- and this is a big "or"- is he quite quick witted and aware under all his vague exterior, and does he sense already that something isn't quite right with the EIC, be it their colonialisation policies or their shady magicians? Does he in some way approve of his son joining the EIC as a soldier, or does he think his son naive, and a fool? Does his son then join the Company as an act of rebellion to his father, or because he thinks to finally win his father's approval?

I wish Simon would just answer the damn question, so that I'd know.

Will hopefully have some movement in this scene by tomorrow, which is finally, blissfully, Friday.